


A Lantern in the Snow

by Bialy



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, nick dies fic, unbeta'd we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27993690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bialy/pseuds/Bialy
Summary: The world is black, and white, and grey, and rain falls dismally like a clinging mist. Nick’s collar is turned up against the chill, one hand shoved into a worn pocket, the other holding a cigarette close to his lips. The glow of the streetlight pools around him, infecting this one spot of the street with light. He waits for the dame who called him out here.*Nick is dying. Nick is dreaming. In his last few moments, he has all the time in the world.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	A Lantern in the Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't think that after so many years of trying to write something for F04, I'd start off murdering my favourite character. I thought I'd rounded a corner in my writing into endless fluff, but apparently there's this in there too. I hope you enjoy reading.

The world is black, and white, and grey, and rain falls dismally like a clinging mist. Nick’s collar is turned up against the chill, one hand shoved into a worn pocket, the other holding a cigarette close to his lips. The glow of the streetlight pools around him, infecting this one spot of the street with light. He waits for the dame who called him out here.

When she arrives, she flickers like an old film reel, her hair at once a smooth, sleek coil of curls, and loose mess, and tight, high ponytail. Het face glitches a little until it settles into something sleek and polished – high cheekbones, greyed-out rouge, familiar and new. Definitely the woman from the other end of the phone line. He can recognise the voice even before she speaks.

“Valentine.”

Her voice rises and falls across the parts of his name, like a lover’s caress. He pulls his hand from his packet, cigarette pack in hand, to offer her one. She turns her head in an elegant refusal – because, of course, now she is holding a long cigarillo, smoke curling into the thin rain.

“I’ve got a case for you, detective.”

Nick brings his own smoke to his lips again. The hand holding it is stripped bare, bone all on show. No, not bone. Something else. Of course. His hand has looked like this for a long time, now. Of course.

The dame seems to be waiting for him to speak, but he doesn’t. Eventually, her perfect poise unruffled, she continues.

“It’s my husband, detective. He’s missing.”

“He ain’t missing, Nora. He’s dead. Been dead years now. You know that.” The words come easy, like he’s reading from a script. He knows her husband is dead. He’s been dead since he knew her. Since she asked for his help.

Why did she ask for his help to find her husband when she told him he was dead? Strange broad.

The woman’s façade seems to flicker for the first time. Apart from all that glitching when she first materialised in the street. Materialised? No, she walked out from that alley now. He remembers her walking out from that alley. People walk places. 

“My husband isn’t dead yet.” It’s the same voice but it isn’t. The sultry, smooth cadence of a fatale is still there, but underneath is something like that hand of his that holds his cigarette. Raw, bare bones. Metal on metal curled into a claw, curled into something untender and untameable.

“Of course not,” he tells her, soothingly. “He’s just missing. I’ll find him, doll.”

Poor thing. Her husband missing, worrying herself that he’s dead. Maybe he is, Nick thinks practically. But he ain’t gonna tell her that in the street. People go missing and wind up stiffs, for sure, but it’s more likely he’s taken up with some other broad and old Nicky Valentine is the one who’s gonna have to break it to her. Still, work is work, and pay is pay. Gotta bring home the bacon to Nora somehow.

Funny that this new client should also be his wife. Though he wonders who her husband is, this guy that’s missing. A damned fool to walk out on Nora, that’s for sure. Maybe there’s more to it than that, because he’s never known a guy – and a heaping helping of gals, too – not to have eyes for only her once they get hooked. He might run this one past Jenny when he gets home.

But she’ll probably just sit there like usual and look at him with those sad eyes, the blood all crusted round the hole in her forehead. Lately it’s felt like there’s more and more between them, and less and less to save. Maybe they should try marriage counselling one of these days.

“When was the last time you saw him?” he asks, dropping his cigarette to the ground and crushing it beneath his heel. A shame. He likes to smoke when he’s with a new client. Gives him something to do with his hands. Lets him keep the bare one busy, show them it’s just as normal as theirs, give or take a few red blood cells. 

The woman looks at him, something unreadable in his stare. Her eyes don’t look right in the grey. They’re better with their colour. 

Then she says two things, both at once, and Nick isn’t really sure how that works. But he hears them both, all the same.

“Don’t you remember?”

And,

“I’m lookin’ at him.”

*

“This place is such a mess, Nick, I swear to God. You never used to be like this.”

Nora is fussing around his apartment, picking up bits of debris. There’s a broken gargoyle on the rug, and a withered, uprooted mutfruit plant sat sadly under his window. 

“This is exactly how I used to be before the world ended, doll. Could barely move for pizza boxes in here.”

“And Jenny stood for that?” Nora wrinkles her nose and regards a bloody skull she has just picked up from his coffee table with distaste.

“Lord, no. This was before Jenny. I wouldna never done this to her.”

Nora laughs. She’s cleaning up bullet casings, now, and blood is seeping from a hole in her neck. “But you’ll do it to me?”

Nick regards her fondly from his seat on the couch. “We both know you and me seen worse together, hon.”

She puts her hand on her hip and regards him critically. Her lip splits open as he watches. “So it’s fair that I gotta put up with it on my day off, too?”

He pats the sofa next to him, encouraging her to sit down. She clearly doesn’t have long left, and it would be nice for her to take the load off before the end comes. “You didn’t just marry me for my late-in-life neat freak habits, didja?”

Nora looks at him oddly. “I didn’t marry you at all,” she says.

Oh yeah, that’s right. He never told her how he felt. And now it’s too late, because she’s dying in his old living room, in his crappy rented apartment overlooking a Super Duper Mart. That’s a shame.

No, Nora’s not dying. He made sure of that.

Damn shame he is, though. Woulda liked to have finally plucked up the guts to let her know he’s loved her all this time.

*

The hill looks out over the Glowing Sea. They’re too close, really, for it to be good for her. But as long as they’re gone before the time runs out, she’ll probably be okay.

“Don’t know why you dragged me out all this way,” he grouses, though they both know it’s complaining for form’s sake. He’d have been spitting pins if she’d left him behind. He’s gotta be there for this.

Nora swats at him fondly. He wants to take her hand, pull her against him, tell her...tell her…

Well. When he’s got the words for it.

“Like you’d ever let me live it down if I’d trotted off without you again. You nearly had a conniption last time, old man.”

He raises his hands in mock defence. “Hey, hey, I thought we were gonna cut it with the ‘old’ jokes. You owe me that much.”

Nora laughs, and tips her face to the sky. “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing, Nick Valentine. Not a thing I haven’t paid back a hundred times already.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“And the same to you, too.”

“Aw, doll, I don’t know about that.”

Nora’s look turns serious, and she nudges herself closer to him. He wants to put his arm round her. He tries it out. Pulls it back. Tries is again. This time it settles, and Nora leans into him. “You’re too hard on yourself, Nick. If you think I’ve done the ‘old man’ thing to death, how about you give the self-flagellation a rest?”

He tucks her closer, sighs. “Not sure what I’d be without it, is the only thing.”

“You’d be my Nick, just my Nick I didn’t have to constantly call out on his bullshit.”

He chuckles. “I can try, then. For you.”

They sit quietly looking out at the Sea, for a while, before Nora sits up. There’s a whistling in the air that fills him with a sudden, distant sense of dread. 

“Here it comes,” she says, looking up like she’s expecting Fourth of July fireworks. She takes his hand and squeezes. “I can’t wait.”

He watches the bomb arc down. He watches the fallout rush towards them as the mushroom cloud climbs into the sky. He never saw this, though. Is this his imagining of it? From an old film or something? Or is this Nora’s memory? It certainly looks farther away than it should, with them sitting here on the edge of it all. Much more like it mighta looked from her Vault. 

She turns to him, sombre, as nuclear annihilation speeds calmly towards them. She brings her free hand to cup his face.

“I’ll be here until the end, Nick. I’ll be here until the end.”

He knows. How else would he being seeing her memories like this, if she wasn’t here? And she wasn’t one to leave things unfinished. So she’ll be here until the end.

Just a shame it had to end like this, really.

A shame it had to end at all.

*

“Nora.”

“Shh, Nick. Don’t talk.”

“Nora.”

“It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get you to Amari. Or HQ. One of them will know what to do. You’re gonna be okay.”

“I’m not going to be okay, Nora,” he tells her calmly. “You know this. We’ve been through this.”

“You can tell me later. There’s going to be plenty of time. It’s gonna be okay.”

“There’s not going to be plenty of time. This was my last chance. I didn’t tell you, but I should have, I should have told you long before this.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Please Nick, please, don’t worry about me. You always worry about me. Worry about yourself for once, you idiot. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“This woulda happened at some point, kid, to one of us. I’m just glad it went this way. Couldn’t have coped if it was you on the ground.”

“Good. Keep that worry in your head and stay with me, then. It’s gonna be okay. Just stay with me.”

“It’s time for me to go, Nora. You know that. You know this was where it ended, really. The rest is just echoes. Echoes and smoke and things I never got the nerve to tell ya.”

“Stay with me, Nick. It’s gonna be okay. Stay with me.”

*

“Is it actually you?” he asks her over noodles. The broth is way too salty. The noodles are kinda soggy. He’d kinda expected a robot to make better, but he guesses Takahashi didn’t exactly have the best raw ingredients to work with.

“What, here?” Nora asks, pausing with a forkful of noodles halfway to her mouth.

“Yeah. Is this –“ he gestures to her “- somehow actually you, or is it my memories, or a program to help me wind down, or….or heck, I don’t know, something else entirely?”

Nora eats her noodles, appears to ponder the question. “A bit of both. Well, the memories, and me. Though I guess it’s a program as much as anything else. I’ve seen what’s happening and I’m there in parts of it, and the rest, it feels like I’m just playing out a part. Sometimes it might be memories. Sometimes I think it might be dreams.”

“I don’t dream,” Nick tells her, confused. “You know that. I don’t even sleep.”

Nora smiles a small, sad smile. “Close enough to dreaming now as makes no matter.”

Nick sighs and tips his glass of beer towards her. “Close enough.” He takes a long, slow draught. When he puts his glass down, he asks the question that’s been on the tip of his tongue the whole time they’ve been sitting here at Power Noodles. “This is it, isn’t it? This is the end. I’m dying. I’m shutting down.”

Nora takes his hand. She smiles that sad smile again. There are tears in her eyes. She nods.

Nick lowers his head, lets his thoughts drift. Can he remember…?

“Huh. I can’t even remember what it was. What did me in at the end.”

Nora squeezes his hand. “Does it matter?”

He raises his head, catches her eye. Fixes her with a look. “Did it get you?”

“No. No, you got me out. Then – then after, I had to come back. I came back for you.”

He smiles. “You always would, doll. But if it didn’t get you, then no. It doesn’t matter. One death’s much the same as the other when it comes down to it. As long as you’re okay.”

Nora’s eyes are very shiny. She is holding his hand like she never wants to let go. It lets something nudge at him from the back of his mind.

“Hey. At the end, did I ever manage to….was I trying to tell you something?”

Nora blinks. “Yes. Yeah. I told you –“ this time, a tear does slide down her face. “I told you there’d be plenty of time.”

Nick chuckles sadly. “I don’t wanna say I told you so…”

It brings the tiniest, most hopeful quirk of a smile to her lips. “You’re the worst, Nick,” she says, with such fondness that he feels his heart crack in two. The pain feels so real he wonders if that was part of it – if the core of his is actually in two parts right now, as the last of him flickers and blinks and holds her hand on a clear night in Diamond City, as something out there gives him one last chance.

“I love you, Nora,” he tells her, simply. “I had a lot of reasons for not saying. But I love you. Not just as my partner, as my friend. I love you more than anything in this whole hopeless world, anything that ever is or ever was.”

Nora looks at him. He can’t quite tell all the things that are at play in her expression. There’s shock. There’s disbelief. There’s a reflection of something, of his own feelings, played back at him outta her eyes, but he can’t work out what kinda love it is she’s broadcasting, what it is she feels –

“Nick,” she begins, her voice tight and choked, her fingers winding into his. She’s about to say more, but that split in his heart hurts so very, very much, and he can’t hear her over the rushing in his ears, over the feeling of something coming up out of the deep that he’s been outswimming for far too long. 

Diamond City fades, bits of it blinking out, the colours fading. He knows he won’t see it again, and ain’t that a damned shame.

*

He is on the ground. Something deep inside him does not feel right. Something deep inside him feels more wrong than it has ever felt. And he knows, he knows in the way he’s seen other people Know, when it’s their time, and he can’t go without saying it. He can’t go without telling her, at last, what she means to him.

She is over him, holding him in her arms. She was fussing the first time, but now she is just looking at him, sad and tired, grief heavy in her eyes.

“Nora – Nora –“ The words don’t wanna seem to come. Talking has never felt this…corrupted.

“You don’t have to tell me, Nick. I know.” She runs a hand across his face, he fingers tracing the jagged edge where he stops being Nick and starts being empty space.

“I gotta – Nora, please, I gotta –“

“You don’t, Nick. You already have. It’s okay. You can rest. I know.”

“I’ve gotta – I gotta tell you something. Before – I don’t wanna go without saying it –“

“You didn’t, Nick. You didn’t.”

“Are you okay? Did you get hit? Nora, are you – are you hurt? Are you –“

“I love you, too, Nick.”

“Never gonna stop worrying about you, doll. Never.”

“I love you, too.”

And the echoes of her voice, panicked, nothing like the calm, hurting woman holding him now. Telling him hold on, hold on, stay with me.

I’m trying, Nora.

I’m trying.

It ain’t gonna be enough.

*

They are standing in the vault. In her Vault. It is cold, so cold. Rows of cryopods line the walls, and they’re all empty. They’ve been empty for a while now. His girl made sure of that. 

Nora is holding his hand. He knows they have come to the end. But Nora is holding his hand, so he finds it hard to care.

“How long have we been doing this?” he asks her. “How long have you been…in here, with me?”

She twines her fingers round his. Her breath mists in front of her.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “A while. A few minutes. Time isn’t the same in here as it is…out there. I feel like it’s been months. More. Do you remember finding that carnival?”

Nick laughs. “Christ, yeah. You clinging me at the top of that ferris wheel is one for the memory bank. Didn’t think heights bothered you.”

“They don’t,” she grins. “I just wanted to be closer to you.”

He gives her a look. “Was that your excuse when there was that radstag stampede?”

“Er, no, that was terrifying.”

“Clinging to me again, all shaking –“

“Oh, shut up.”

“’Nick, Nick’…”

Nora pulls her hand away from him and crosses her arms. But she’s supressing a grin. “Honestly. A lady goes through all this trouble for a nice long goodbye, and this is how you treat me.”

Nick pulls her against him, a smooth movement that he’s sure he’s never made, but feels like he’s done it a thousand times. Is that just from his imaginings? 

No. No, he has done this a thousand times. Whenever the record skips and they end up somewhere else, it’s a crapshoot as to what he remembers. Sometimes he remembers all of it – their whole time spent inside his head. He remembers her telling him about Amari’s program, about hooking herself up to a memory pod once it was clear he wasn’t coming back. About wanting to say goodbye properly, before the end.

Since they got to the point in this weird, messed up timeline where he told her he loves her, he usually remembers it, unless he gets stuck in an actual, real-life memory that they’re playing out. Sometimes Nora plays along with it, sometimes she goes off track.   
Sometimes they wind up in the Commonwealth, sometimes it’s Boston proper. Usually, it’s some weird hybrid of the two, the old world and the new bleeding into each other, making the kind of sense he remembers dreams making. Some of the chapters haven’t been so good. There’s been a lot of trauma to sort through, a lot of confusion.

But there’s been some corkers in there, too.

The carnival stands out, of course. So does their trip to Nuka World, and their picnic in the middle of the Glowing Sea. He liked the ones with Dogmeat, too, even when Dogmeat was a Deathclaw that Nora kept trying to tie a bow to. He’s not always sure which ones are Nora-Nora, and which ones are the pseudo-Noras, dream and memory and longing blending into a script that she just plays out until things fade out and fade back in.  
He knows for sure a few of the ones that were real-real, though. Diamond City, for one. It’s a shame that whatever part of him held the memories of that place seemed to degrade after their noodles together, because they haven’t been back. He thinks they were there before. Maybe. Gosh, Nora was right.

It has been a while.

Their first kiss was real, too. As real as it gets in here. And waking up in a pre-war hotel, lost in each other’s arms, ordering room service. That was real.

And when he asked her to marry him, just for the heck of it, just humour me, doll – that was real. It was real enough when she threw her arms around him, crying in grief and joy, and sobbed yes, yes, you idiot, you idiot, I hate you, I love you, yes, it would always have been yes.

Time is different in here. But there’s also no one to hate him for what he is, nothing to get in their way. Maybe it woulda been this way if he’d ever managed to tell her out there, before it all…happened. Maybe it wouldn’t. 

He feels like he used to think about that. That they used to talk about it. That they both cried about it, that she held his face and they laughed through tears about why neither of them had just said something. He can cry in here. He can eat. He even has some half-flickering thoughts that he’s been capable of other things with her, too. Everything is happening at once and everything has been unfolding for a long, long time.

But he knows they’ve reach the end, now.

Just like he knew it was real when they stood in an empty church and said their vows to each other, without a priest or a guest in sight. He knows it wasn’t a real wedding. He knows they don’t have a real marriage. He knows that whether it’s her or not, none of this is real-real.

But, he guesses, here at the end it’s close enough as makes no difference.

The Vault is so cold. Nora is shivering. He doesn’t remember her really shivering in here before now. Maybe it’s a sign of how far he has run down – how little of him is left. 

It’s time to say goodbye. 

She is still in his arms, pressed against him. He tilts her face up to his and kisses her, long, slow, soft. She kisses him back, her arms wound against his neck. Trembling ever so slightly in his grasp.

“Thank you,” he tells her quietly, when they break apart. “Thank you. For this. For…everything. For being you.”

At some point, she has started to cry. “How can I go back out there?” she asks him. “After this, after being with you…how can I go out there and just…live?”

He smooths her tears away with a hand that flickers from human, to synth, to metal, and back to synth. He feels whole in a way he hasn’t for decades. He feels the emptiness growing inside him.

Not long now.

“Same way you did before, love. Same way you’ll do everything something tries to keep you down.”

She is sobbing in earnest. “But I won’t have you.”

He wraps her in his arms. “You’ll always have me, Nora.”

“No I won’t,” she says, batting a weak hand against his chest petulantly. “No I won’t.”

“I love you,” he tells her. “I love you.” At first it makes her cry harder, but he keeps saying it, smoothing her hair, pressing kisses to her forehead, until her sobs cease, and her shivering stops, and she stills in his arms.

Eventually, she lets out a long, slow breath. “I love you too, Nick.”

He turns her face up again and after studying her for a few moments, presses one last, soft kiss to her lips.

“You’re gonna do fine, kid. I know it.”

She closes her eyes briefly, but when she opens them, her gaze is resolute. “I am,” she tells him, like a promise. Like a goodbye. “But I’ll miss you.”

“Damn right you will.”

He thinks about making some kind of verbal will with her, until he remembers they’ve gone through that a dozen times before. No, this moment is just for them.

“Goodbye, Nora.” They’ve said a hundred things, a thousand things, to each other in here, but never this. He half expects her to cry again – he sure as hell feels like he might – but there’s that steady resolution still in her eyes, and behind them, an ocean of love that will guide him to his rest.

“Goodbye, Nick.”

And as she says it, he can feel it start to happen – as if that was the key. The last pieces of him, the last bits of code or the final piece of his consciousness that was hanging on – whatever it was, it starts to unspool. He can feel himself drift, even as he holds her, feel what he was and is and wasn’t and couldn’t be but was all along begin to drop away. The pain, the love, the loss. It is all going now. He is finally unwinding. He can finally rest.

His last moment is her, looking up at him, every moment between the two of them caught and suspended in their gaze until it fragments, falls, and is swept away. There is nothing, and nothing, and the world spins on until the last of him is gone.

And now, there is just sleep. 

Perchance to dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Does this story have a heartbreaking playlist? Funny you should ask. It basically only exists because of one.
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6cOZH5G1rkwdRWtwIgAHMC?si=paqUAHwiQFGo2d1iNqkCTw


End file.
